9781644135945

The Easter Cycle
and in spite of our unworthiness. We have received the blessing of our heavenly Father in the
possession of Christ and eternal salvation.
O blessed mercy of God! Without any merit on our part He has shown us mercy. Why
have the first-born, the people of Israel, been rejected? Why has redemption been withdrawn
from them and offered to the Gentiles? Why has God called me to membership in His Church,
while passing by so many who are perhaps more worthy than I? “How incomprehensible are His
judgments and how unsearchable His ways!” (Rom 11:33.) How does it come about that “two
women shall be grinding at the mill; one shall be taken [into the kingdom of God] and one shall
be left” (Mt 24:41)? Why is one man given light and another left in darkness? Whoever has the
light of grace, has received it by an infinite, loving, and completely mysterious election. Jacob
has been chosen instead of Esau. In gratitude the liturgy confesses: “It is good to give praise to
the Lord, and to sing to Thy name, O Most High. To show forth Thy mercy in the morning and
Thy truth at night” (Gradual). Let us consider this truth and give thanks to God. “What hast
thou that thou hast not received?” (1 Cor 4:7.)
How have we responded to this love of our Father? Have we proved worthy of our election?
The Gospel gives us the answer. Like the younger of the two sons we come to our Father and
ask, “Father, give me the portion of substance that falleth to me.” After a few days the younger
son, the prodigal, takes all his possessions and goes into a far country. There he wastes his substance,
living riotously. A famine comes, and he cleaves to one of the citizens of that country,
who sends the prodigal to his farm to tend the swine. The foolish young man suffers great
hardships and returns to his senses. He says to himself, “How many hired servants in my father’s
house abound with bread, and I here perish with hunger? I will arise and go to my father’s house
and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. I am not worthy to be
called thy son. And rising up he came to his father.” His father, recognizing him already from
a distance, is moved with sympathy, hastens toward him, embraces him, and kisses him. The
repentant son falls at his father’s feet. “Father, I have sinned. . . . I am not worthy to be called
thy son.” But the father forgives him, and calling one of his servants, says to him, “Bring forth
quickly the first robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and
bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; because this my son was
dead, and is come to life again; he was lost, and is found.”
This story is repeated again today. It is the history of the Church; it is the history of our own
desertion. In this Gospel we are given an urgent call to repentance and conversion. “Father, I
have sinned.” Penance alone can save us. Our Father welcomes us with mercy. The sin and its
eternal punishment are forgiven; the good works which we did before sin and the merits which
we lost through sin are revived. The Father receives us again as His children, and celebrates a
joyful banquet with us at Holy Communion.
In the story of each human life, God’s mercy stands on one side and the unfaithfulness of man
on the other. Will God have to cast us off as He did the people of Israel? Have we not fully
deserved it? Sometimes it appears that God wishes to allow our faithless generation to go its
own way. If He does, it will merit a well-deserved punishment.
What can save us from rejection? Only penance, self-examination, and conversion. “Be
converted to Me with all your heart, in fasting and in weeping and in mourning” (Chapter at
Tierce; Jl 2:12). “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unjust man his thoughts, and let him
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